No text-to-speech, or lane assist. Touch interface is sluggish and difficult.

Bottom Line

The Nokia 5800 is a good GPS navigator and an affordable unlocked smartphone, though it doesn't really excel on either count.

Need an unlocked phone that doubles as an accurate GPS device? The Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition could be what you're looking for. Unlike the Garmin nüvifone G60 on AT&T, which was a total failure as a phone, the Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition began life as a full-featured, unlocked smartphone. This new package rings in at a reasonable $299, with no cell-phone contract required and a lifetime subscription for GPS service and map updates. It comes with everything you need for in-car navigation. In testing, I found it gets the job done, despite a weak touch-screen interface and some missing GPS features.

Hardware Mount and Bundled Accessories
The Nokia 5800 XPressMusic is a year-old phone; what's new is that Nokia has both lowered its price and is pitching it as an in-car GPS system, rather than a music player. I knew going in that it comes with additional GPS-related accessories. But nothing prepared me for just how many; it looks like half of Best Buy exploded inside the box. Let's break the accessories down into two groups. First up is the phone, which comes with a set of wired stereo earbuds, a travel-size charger, a microUSB cable, and an 8GB microSD card, plus the battery, stylus, and a wrist strap. The other group consists of the GPS hardware: a Nokia CR-103 car holder that assembles from three large black plastic pieces, and a Nokia DC-4 car charger that keeps the 5800 juiced when navigating.

The mount doesn't just snap together; to assemble it, you need a screwdriver, an X-acto knife, and some patience. The result is a heavy and sturdy mount that stays put on the windshield, and lets you snap the handset in and out regularly. But it's much more complicated than TomTom's single-piece rotating mount, and you have to unplug the power connector each time you remove the phone. The DC-4's coiled power cord is also too short; it looked stretched no matter where I positioned the unit on the windshield. On the plus side, the mount's arm is long enough that you don't have to reach very far to control the 5800 from the driver's seat.

Nokia Maps and Navigation Performance
Nokia Maps features driving and walking modes. It offers an unusually robust array of Lonely Planet and Michelin-based travel information, plus traffic and weather updates, for two years. On first boot-up, the app displays a 2D map. An Options button switches between road map, satellite, and terrain modes. The satellite mode looks good, but it loads slowly even over 3G and doesn't work during actual navigation. An information bar lets you explore, walk, drive, show details on a location, add to a route, or send it to someone.

The search button runs POI searches and lets you type in addresses. Scrolling down lists was a pain, since they're too squished to flick up or down like on an iPhone. Instead, you must touch the tiny scroll bar in just the right spot, and then move that up and down. Often, it would stop scrolling one or two entries before the one I wanted. I made plenty of mistakes doing this, as well as keying in addresses using the huge yet inaccurate on-screen QWERTY keyboard. The app lacks voice entry, and even a location-aware type-ahead feature; you must enter an entire address or search query each time.

Once out on the road, actual navigation performance was accurate. The 5800 took a several minutes to lock onto my location. But once it got going, most directions matched what I expected on my usual test routes, and off-route recalculations were quick. The app displayed my current speed, distance to the next turn, remaining trip distance, and estimated time of arrival. The map graphics looked sharp, feature 3D landmarks when available, and updated at a quick several times per second.

The Options button lets you switch to day or night mode, choose an alternate route, get traffic info, or see a "dashboard" that shows you more detailed trip information. English voice options include male, female, and "surfer dude." Voice prompts were loud, crisp, and clear, and sounded warmer and fuller than most cell phone speakers. Sadly, there's no text-to-speech functionality for pronouncing street names or even exit numbers. There's also no lane assist feature for navigating complex interchanges.

Call Quality, Camera, and Conclusions
Otherwise, the 5800 is a competent but flawed unlocked Symbian Series 60 smartphone. A brief recap: the 5800 is a slim, thick, lightweight slab. It measures 4.4 by 2.0 by 0.6 inches (HWD) and weighs 3.8 ounces. The 3.2-inch, 640-by-360-pixel plastic resistive touch screen is very sharp, but stubborn; navigating the UI was a pain. It works, but it feels stiff and sluggish to respond, and it looks old.

The 5800 is an excellent voice phone. Voice quality was warm and detailed, with a slightly hollow sound in the earpiece, but plenty of gain in both directions. Reception was solid. The 5800 supports 3G on AT&T and 2G on T-Mobile, and also includes Wi-Fi. Battery life was poor at 3 hours and 32 minutes of talk time in 3G mode. The phone supports both mono and stereo Bluetooth headsets.

The onboard software is a mixed bag, with powerful e-mail (including Microsoft Exchange) and music software, but dysfunctional instant messaging and no document editing software. Nokia originally intended to sell the 5800 as a music player with an innovative free-music program, but that never happened in the U.S.

The disappointingly grainy 3.2-megapixel camera includes Carl Zeiss optics and an LED flash, and records smooth 640-by-360-pixel videos at 30 frames per second. Nokia's Ovi Store is on board for browsing, buying, and installing apps; Nokia throws in a $50 prepaid Visa gift card if you buy the phone and activate your Ovi Store account before December 31st, 2009.

The 5800 Navigation Edition gives you an unlocked, no-contract smartphone with GPS at a great price, but unless you're fanatical about the unlocked part, there are better options out there. The Motorola Droid on Verizon comes with Google Maps Navigation, a totally free app with groundbreaking voice-enabled POI search and animated satellite views, although it has other flaws. The iPhone 3GS offers several solid GPS apps, four of which we've reviewed (from TomTom, TeleNav, Navigon, and ALK). And you can always just buy a GPS and a phone; to check out the best GPS units, head to our GPS product guide. Nokia would need to include text-to-speech on the GPS side and dramatically improve the touch interface on the phone side to make this a market leader.

About the Author

Jamie Lendino is the Editor-in-Chief of ExtremeTech.com, and has written for PCMag.com and the print magazine since 2005. Recently, Jamie ran the consumer electronics and mobile teams at PCMag, and before that, he was the Editor-in-Chief of Smart Device Central, PCMag's dedicated smartphone site, for its entire three-year run from 2006 to 2009. Pri... See Full Bio

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